From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
From hardship to benefit.
A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the
emergence of the European Marriage Pattern.1
By Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor2
Utrecht University
I.
Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 2
II.
Analysing the Nuclear Hardship Theory ....................................................................................... 5
A.
Conceptualizing family and household: extended versus nuclear households........ 5
B.
The influence of timing and location of marriage: the squeeze hypothesis............... 9
III.
A.
Benefits in a nuclear society? ......................................................................................................13
Extending the nuclear household?............................................................................................14
B. Differences in individual arrangements between family, neighbours and
strangers ........................................................................................................................................................19
C.
IV.
The influence of the market on care-taking institutions .................................................23
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................27
List of figures:
Figure 1: The Squeeze Hypothesis: life cycles in EMP and non-EMP areas............................10
Figure 2: The age-gap hypothesis ............................................................................................................12
Figure 3: Security arrangements for the elderly................................................................................18
Figure 4: Solutions for elderly care in Europe during the early modern period..................28
Figure 5: Security arrangements for the elderly in perspective .................................................30
List of tables:
Table 1: Overview of differences between family and households ............................................. 5
Table 2: Life expectancy in the first half of the 15th century.......................................................13
Table 3: Percentage of servants in several northern and central European populations 16
Table 4: Percentage of servants in southern European populations ........................................16
WORK IN PROGRESS
DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHORS
The research for this article was made possible by funding from the European Research Council under the
European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement n°
240928) as part of the project '"United we stand". The dynamics and consequences of institutions for
collective action in pre-industrial Europe'. See also www.collective-action.info
2 Corresponding author: [email protected]
1
1
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
I.
Introduction
Guilt-ridden sentences like: ‘I promised mom I’d never put her in a nursing
home’; ‘Coping with the nursing home decision’; ‘The big decision of putting a
loved one in a nursing home’ or ‘Advantages of putting your parents in a nursing
home’, flood the Internet. Nursing homes for the elderly prevail in Western
societies, as much as they are frowned upon by non-Western migrants. Since
having children used to be an investment for old age, as it still is in many parts of
the world,3 including Southern and Eastern Europe,4 the question rises why,
when and where this family safety net - presuming it ever has been present seems to have unravelled in North-West Europe. Our literature review is meant
to structure the debate and to throw a light on this process, by answering the
question to what extend the elderly had access to alternatives, to secure their
well-being.
Central in our review article is ‘the nuclear hardship hypothesis’, which
was discussed by Peter Laslett, as part of the discourse on ‘the historical
functions of kinship and the family’ in the eighties.5 In his article, Laslett suggests
that hardship, stemming from neolocality, such as found in parts of North-West
Europe, would have had implications for the importance of collective institutions
to ensure security for individuals. The idea of a family-to-collectivity continuum,
of family and collectivity complementing each other, is central in his article. The
way Laslett puts it, the importance of collective institutions rises as the
immediate result of neo-locality, and the presence of nuclear family households.6
The collectivity in Laslett’s description stands for top-down charity organisations
that emerge to take care of those who are in need. Laslett furthermore does not
confine the nuclear hardship hypothesis to neolocality, when he discusses the
position of the elderly. He adds the idea of ‘the life-cycle squeeze’,7 which arises
3 C. Kağitçibaşi, ‘Old-Age Security Value of Children: Cross-National Socioeconomic Evidence’, Journal of
Cross-Cultural Psychology,March 1982 13: 29-42; M. Vlassoff and Carol Vlassoff, ‘Old Age Security and the
Utility of Children in Rural India’, Population Studies Vol. 34, No. 3 (Nov., 1980), pp. 487-499; J. Hoddinott,
‘Rotten Kids or Manipulative Parents: Are Children Old Age Security in Western Kenya?’ Economic
Development and Cultural Change Vol. 40, No. 3 (Apr., 1992), pp. 545-565.
4 D.S. Reher , ‘Family Ties in Western Europe: Persistent Contrasts’, Population and Development Review, Vol.
24, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp. 203-234. T. J. Guerrerro and M. Naldini, ‘Is the South so different?: Italian and
Spanish Families in Comparative Perspective’, in: Southern European Welfare states. Between Crisis and
Reform. M. Rhodes (ed.), 1997, p 42-67.
5 P. Laslett, Family, kinship and collectivity as systems of support in pre-industrial
Europe: a consideration of the ' nuclear-hardship' hypothesis Continuity and Change 3 (2), 1988, 153-157.
Before Laslett, others, such as James Smith (“Widowhood and ageing in traditional English society”, in
Ageing and Society 4 (1984), 439) and Richard Smith (some issues concerning families and their property in
rural England 1250-1800”, in Richard Smith ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle (Cambridge 1984) had used the
term.
6 idem 1988:156, cf. A. Greif, ‘Family structure, institutions and growth: the origins and implications of
Western corporations’, The American Economic Review 96 (2006) 308-312.
7idem 1988:169. Laslett does not, in fact, use the term ‘squeeze’ in this article. The term ‘life-cycle squeeze’
has been employed by sociologists and demographers, who originally focused on the gender aspects of the
life-cycle squeeze, demonstrating that at some point in the family life-cycle –at marriage, as well as at the
point of children reaching adolescence- a women’s income is needed to make ends meet. The idea that this
squeeze coincides with parents in need was no part of the original life-cycle-squeeze hypothesis. C.f.: W.
Gove; Grimm, J. ; Motz, S.C.; Thompson, J., ‘The family life cycle: Internal dynamics and social consequences’
Sociology & Social Research, Vol 57(2), Jan 1973, 182-195; V. K. Oppenheimer, ‘The life-cycle squeeze: The
2
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
not only from neolocality, but also from high ages at marriage, linking nuclear
hardship with John Hajnal’s ‘European Marriage Pattern’ (EMP).8
High age at marriage causes life cycles of parents and children to diverge;
children tend to marry and have children of their own, at the very same time
their parents get old and needy, and start losing their spouses. Consequently,
both parents as well as their grown up children, need not only physical
assistance (childcare, elderly care), but also financial assistance (in the case of
the children: to support household formation or to support children not yet able
to make an income. In the case of parents: to support oneself when no longer
active at the labour market). Combined with neolocality, which causes parents
and their married children to live in separate households, diverging life cycles
make it more difficult for the elderly to receive the support they might need from
their children. A focus on the way in which the elderly cope with ‘nuclear
hardship’ provides an insight into the way the family safety net is replaced.
‘Nuclear hardship’ also features in articles about family economics.
Kotlikoff and Spivak, in a theoretical contribution, have claimed that ‘the
institution of the family provides individuals with risk-sharing opportunities
which may otherwise not be available’. Since there is a degree of trust and an
exchange of information within the family that is more difficult to achieve with
outsiders, problems with respect to ‘moral hazard, adverse selection, and
deception’ were less stringent, and transaction costs are generally lower.9
Although Kotlikoff and Spivak do not have historical societies in mind when they
discuss these issues, we may assume they also hold true for families in the past.
Their analysis ‘indicates that implicit risk-sharing arrangements [within the
family] can provide powerful economic incentives for marriage and family
formation.’10 Here, they more or less agree with social historians who believe
that the family can substitute for insurance institutions.
This already works on a basic level: people who marry and thus combine
their assets implicitly create an old-age pension because ‘for each partner the
risk of living too long is hedged by the other partner’s potential death: if one
partner lives to be very old, there is a high probability that his (or her) spouse
has already died leaving him a bequest to help finance his consumption’.’11 This
amounts to risk pooling increases with the number of partners. Kotlikoff and
Spivak calculate that substantial wealth effects are possible by marrying (ranging
from an increase of 11,7 per cent to 43,0 per cent, depending on age and risk
adversity) and entering into three-person polygamy (15,8 per cent to 68,7 per
cent). They also calculate this for parents with children, for whom creating a pool
of wealth on condition children will support parents during old age, also
substitutes for insurance. Their theoretical approach lends support to the
interaction of men’s occupational and family life cycles’, DemographyVolume 11, Number 2, 227-245; R. A.
Van Dusen& E. B. Sheldon, ‘The Changing Status of American Women: A Life Cycle Perspective’,American
Psychologist, 31, 2, 106-116, Feb 1976.
8 Three features were central to this European Marriage Pattern: neo-locality, a high age at (first) marriage
(over 23 for women and over 26 for men) and a large number of singles who never married at all. Hajnal, J.,
‘European marriage in perspective’, in D.V. Glassand D. E. C.Eversley, eds., Population in History (1965), pp.
101–43.
9L.J. Kotlikoff and A. Spivak, ‘The family as an incomplete annuities market’, The Journal of Political Economy
89 (1981) 372-391, pp. 372.
10Kotlikoff and Spivak, ‘The family’, 373-374.Cf their assertion ‘that the recurrent instability in family
arrangements may, to some extent, reflect recent growth in pension and social security public annuities’
(idem, 388-389).
11Kotlikoff and Spivak, ‘The family’, 380.
3
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
nuclear hardship hypothesis: ‘complex’ types of family formation provide better
possibilities for insurance against old age, and hence, nuclear families are likely
to experience problems.
In this article we address several issues, all with the underlying intention
of refining and reorienting the nuclear-hardship-debate. We feel there is a need
for such reorientation of the debate as the long-term outcome of this process
towards a society built upon nuclear households has not lead to more hardship,
quite the contrary. Nor would it be fair to claim that this outcome has to be
thanked entirely to top-down provisions, and then in particular via charity. In
this article we want to stress the institutional diversity of the solutions for
hardship, and we hereby focus on one particular group in society, namely the
elderly. We will demonstrate that elderly had more “agency” than is usually
expected and that a combination of institutional arrangements besides the topdown provisions in which the elderly participated actively offered more
resilience in society to deal with the so-called “hardship”.
We start this article by analysing the nuclear hardship theory, by first
explaining clearly the differences between households and family in order to
avoid any further confusion. Laslett’s theory has to do with two important units
of analysis: the household –and in particular the size and internal organisation of
it- and marriage- and in particular the degree to which it is postponed and where
it is localised. The size of the household decides upon the “critical mass” of
people that would be available to support needy members of the
family/household; the internal structure has to do with implications of the
presence of a hierarchy on which we will elaborate later. Marriage decisions
about timing and location –hence the link with marriage patterns- influence the
degree to which generations are available to help eachother. In order to refine
the debate, we will in this article, keep both aspects separate, whereas in the past
the debate seems to have covered a mixture of both. After having cleared this
out, we explain how the changing course of households and families within EMPareas lead to the so-called squeeze-situation. Following in this part we evaluate
to what extend this situation created a negative outcome for in particular the
elderly. A focus on other specific categories such as ‘the poor’ would be less
useful, as poverty does not necessarily hold a direct relationship with changes in
household formation, but is rather related to economic hardship in general. Our
focus on one particular group such as the elderly also allows us to evaluate their
well-being better than when looking at society as a whole. Considering that the
nuclear hardship lead to a particularly difficult situation for the elderly one
would expect them to be suffering substantially. This would normally have an
effect on their life-expectancy. As we will demonstrate life-expectancy for the
elderly was not lower in NW-Europe in comparison to areas where the family
ties were stronger and elderly were taken care of by their family. On the
contrary: life expectancy was as high as elsewhere and sometimes even higher.
In other words: there are no indications that a dominance of nuclear households
has a negative effect on the quality of life of the elderly (supposing that this
would be directly related with life expectancy). The question that arises then is
whether this can entirely be attributed to top-down care as is suggested by
Laslett. Was there no charity then in the South? Or was it less performant?
In the third part of our article we will answer this question by
approaching the relationship between household formation, marriage and
4
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
hardship from an entirely different perspective. Instead of focussing on the
negative effects of the EMP- we approach it from the “opportunities” side. By
unravelling the relationship between the presence of the European Marriage
pattern and the difference in which care for the elderly was set up in the various
parts of Europe (EMP and non-EMP), it becomes clear that elderly in the EMPareas were less dependent on what was offered to them in terms of care but that
already early on in the early modern period “instruments” (both financial and
contractual) were available to prove care. Elderly in EMP-areas, and then in
particular those from the middle classes, had more “agency” to solve their
problems. Assuming that the EMP was followed by the whole society (except
maybe the nobility) and that charity would be a (top-down) solution for mainly
the lower strata of society, we need to give more attention to the bottom-up,
demand-driven forms of solutions for hardship among in particular the middleclass. Although Laslett covers “societal responses” to those in need of support
because of nuclear hardship, he leaves out the potential solutions other
institutions such as the capital market could offer. In this context we will pose
the question whether it was possible that nuclear households also created ‘new’
opportunities and how different solutions for hardship were in EMP-areas in
comparison to those in non-EMP-areas.
II.
Analysing the Nuclear Hardship Theory
A.
Conceptualizing family and household: extended versus
nuclear households
The work of Hajnal, as well as the work of Laslett, suffers from a lack of concise
definitions of what is meant by the terms family and household. In fact, both
authors use the term family intermittently for indicating households consisting
of family members, as well as for the ties with the extended family that does not
share a household. Although it is true that most households do consist of
persons related through family ties, a household is not per definition a family,
and a family does not necessarily share a household.12 Household formation,
however, cannot be seen as completely independent of family ties, whether those
ties are biological or a social construction, tying the term family somewhat
further to the term kinship, as used by anthropologists. For the purpose of our
argument we therefore make a clear distinction by what is meant by the terms
family and household based on the work of Jack Goody. Whereas he sees the
family as focused on reproduction, he distinguishes the household as primarily
focused on production, which he subdivides into distribution, preparation and
consumption.13 This division shows how family and households are related. Most
of the other attributes of families and households follow from this basic
distinction.14
Table 1: Overview of differences between family and households
S. J. Yanigisako, ‘Family and Household. The Analysis of Domestic Groups’, Annual Review of Anthropology,
8 (1979): 161-205.
13 J. Goody, ‘TheDevelopment Cycle in Domestic Groups’, Cambridge University Press 1958.
14 cf. M. Fortes, ‘Parenthood, marriage and fertility in West Africa’, Journal of Development Studies Volume
14, Issue 4, 1978 Special Issue: Population and Development, pp.121-149; S. J. Yanigisako, ‘Family and
Household. The Analysis of Domestic Groups’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 8 (1979): 161-205.
12
5
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
Family
• based on reproduction;
• aims to regulate sexuality;
• serves as the primary social group;
• regulates
relationships
and
support;
• different kinship systems are used
throughout the world to indicate
family members;15
• dissolves when reproductions fails
and all members have died.
Household
• based on production; distribution,
preparation, consumption;
• providing support and protection
for members;
• residential, though not necessarily
under one roof;
• formed at marriage or by splitting
and joining;
• dissolves as the result of splitting;
when
production,
protection
and/or support fail, or when
members die.
People belonging to the same household do not necessarily live under the same
roof. They can live side by side, in houses or huts, as is the case on some African
compounds. They usually share assets and eat together, and the work of the
household members tends to support and protect the other household
members.16 Though it is not necessary that they all work together.
Households might include non-kin, such as tenants, lodgers, maids and
apprentices, for various reasons. They might pay (or be paid for by relatives) to
be part of the household, or they might be paid to do so, as is the case with
servants.17 In-living maids and servants who have their own income, support
themselves and cook for themselves, can be counted as separate households,
although they share the same roof and activities. For instance, in Dutch
Hoofdgeld sources of 1623 (tax revenues which mention all household members
per village), servants are often mentioned as in-living, either cooking for
themselves (buiten de kost) or eating with the other household members (in de
kost), which was also the case for in-living lodgers (thuisliggers, kostkopers).
They are mentioned as part of the household under a household head, but
sometimes their ‘heads’ are counted separately (1 hoofd), indicating their
independent status. Few exceptions mention the in-living servants not being
counted, referring to them as counted as part of their parents households in the
same or a distant village. This shows that sometimes people are seen in a
particular position of living in one household, but belonging to another
household, for instance when they migrate on a seasonal basis.
Similarly to the fact that people can belong to more than one household,
they can belong to more than one family, e.g. the one of their father and the one
of their mother; their own family as well as their spouse’s family. Although
singles do form households, they are always part of a larger family. Families
Kinship is the social framework with which family members are labeled. Kinship, however, can be fictive
and is as such not merely based on reproduction, but a social construction. Therefore it is possible to
distinguish different kinship systems throughout the world. ‘Family’ is foremost based on biological ties,
although social constructions (such as marriage or adoption) are similarly used to create those ties. Usually,
however, the terminology used to indicate biological ties versus socially constructed ones differs sufficiently
for all members to be able to recognize biological relationships (blood relations), which form the core of
family relationships. [refs toevoegen]
16 But even here we see components like gender influencing the extent to which support and protection are
expected.
17Hajnal, J., ‘Two kinds of preindustrial household formation system’, Population and Development Review, 8
(1982), pp. 449–494.
15
6
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
dissolve by lack of offspring. Households are formed by either marriage or
splitting, and split or dissolve when their members die. Where death dissolves
both families and households, marriage unites. Families as well as households
are important to regulate the access to property.18 Needless to say that control
over marriage forms a powerful instrument to control property exchange, in the
past, and still today.19
Both Hajnal and Laslett write of ‘household formation’. In doing so, Hajnal
distinguishes ‘simple household systems’ (consisting of only one married couple
or none at all), which he claims are only found in North-Western Europe, and
‘joint household systems’ (consisting of two or more related couples), which are
found ‘elsewhere in the world’. Apart from these terms, causing confusion,20 this
is an oversimplification of the situation ‘elsewhere in the world’. In fact, there is
more to it. In many parts of the world couples do not exist in this sense.
Polygamous marriages, for instance, do not consist of one couple, yet can form
multiple households, each containing but ‘one’ couple, when co-wives live in
different villages.21 Similarly, matrifocal households, which exist in Africa and the
Caribbean, in which mothers live with their children and their children’s
children, without a spouse (or rather without a stable bond with an in-living
husband), do not consist of couples in the traditional sense, yet form
households.22
Whereas Hajnals dichotomy presents an oversimplification of household
formation on a global scale, Laslett is too specific when labelling different forms
of household formation, ending up with many categories (all based on similar
ideas about couples being present or absent), a comparison between countries
becomes complex. Even though Laslett is more specific than Hajnal, his
classification is not complete enough to make a global comparison and
distinguish the earlier mentioned polygamous or matrifocal family households.
Furthermore, Laslett defines the household specifically as a residential group,
when he states that ‘a person can belong to one household only, even if, (…) that
person slept in one household, the one to which we shall allot him, and worked in
another household’.23
For the purpose of this review, we will stick to anthropological definitions
of families and households. A basic division in different household forms,
throughout Europe, includes the conjugal, nuclear, joint and extended family
household. The conjugal family household consists of a couple without children,
whereas the nuclear family household consists of a couple with or without
18T.
Schweizer, D. R. White, ‘Kinship, networks, and exchange’, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
M. C., ‘The marriage exchange: property, social place, and gender in cities of the Low Countries,
1300–1550’, (Chicago and London, 1998).
20 The term ‘joint family household’ strictly refersto households in which siblings and their spouses have
joint property rights and often live together, whether or not with their parents.
T. N. Madan, ‘The joint family: a terminological clarification’, in: Family and Marriage, International Studies in
Sociology and Social Anthropology Volume I, E. J. Brill: Leiden, pp.7-16.
A better option would be the term ‘extended family household’, a term originally used to describe a vertical
relationship of grandparents, parents and children living together, but eventually used as an umbrella for
both horizontally (siblings) as well as vertically (offspring) related family-members sharing a roof. A simple
household system could also have been called a conjugal or nuclear family household system.
G. P. Murdock, Social Structure, New York: MacMillan, 1949:2.
21 M. Koktvedgaard Zeitzen, ‘Polygamy, a cross-cultural analysis’, Berg: Oxford, New York, 2008.
22 E. Blackwood Marriage, ‘Matrifocality and Missing Men’ in: Feminist Anthropology, Past, Present and
Future, by P. L. Geller, K. Stockett (eds.), University of Pennsylvania Press: Pennsylvania, 2006:75-88
23 Hajnal, J., ‘Two kinds of preindustrial household formation system’, Population and Development Review, 8,
1982:513.
19Howell,
7
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
children. The ‘extended family’, as we have discussed before, is a family which
contains not only parents and children, but several, vertical, generations,
including grandparents and/or grandchildren. The term extended family is also
used to include what should be called the ‘joint family’, but strictly spoken
consists of horizontal relationships, between siblings, their spouses and
offspring.24
The ‘stem-family household’, mentioned in regard to European
households,25 is basically an extended family household. But here we can observe
only one sibling remaining at home, with his or her parents, taking over the
household headship, plus all the work this represents. Stem-family households
are extended family households of a specific kind; formed on the basis of
impartible (inter vivos) ‘inheritance’, often based on primogeniture (the right of
the first born).
In order to classify households, we use four categories:
-joint/extended family households (including stem families)26
-conjugal/nuclear family households27
-no-family households
-solitaries
No-family households are not based on kinship relations and cannot be
continued on the basis of reproduction. They are interesting, but form, at least in
Medieval Europe, anomalies rather than recurrent household patterns.28
Solitaries constitute an interesting category. These households only form on two
occasions: when spouses (without in-living children) die in conjugal or former
nuclear families, and as the result of splitting. This is for instance the case with
the NW European singles.29 For the purpose of this review, in which we
reconsider nuclear hardship, we will focus on the distinction between
extended/joint family households, which are formed at splitting, versus
nuclear/conjugal family households, which are neolocal and formed at
marriage.30
G. P. Murdock, Social Structure, New York: MacMillan, 1949;
R.M. Keesing, Cultural Anthropology, a Contemporary Perspective, New York [etc.] : Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1981; L. Holy, Anthropological perspectives on kinship, London [etc.] : Pluto Press, 1996
25 R. Wall, ‘Family and household as work group and kin group: areas of traditional Europe compared’, in R.
Wall, J. Robin, and P. Laslett, eds., Familyforms in historic Europe (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 1-64: A. FauveChamoux and E. Ochiai (eds.), the Stem-Family in Eurasian perspective. Revisiting House Societies, 17th-20th
Centuries. Population, Family and Society, Vol 10, Peter Lang: Bern 2009.
26 Which include Laslett’s multiple family households, complex family households, stem-family households,
frerèches and multigenerational households.
27 Which include the simple family households.
28 Convents, however, are no-family households. The ties between the inhabitants of a convent are
reinforced by spiritual kinship and the use of kinship terms referring to this spiritual kinship - ‘father’,
‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’ and ‘child’- are similar to the terms used for biological kinship terms.
29 Hajnal defined the ‘large number of singles who never married at all’ as a characteristic of the EMP.
However, it is not clear whether those singles were actually forming households, since most of those singles
were part of the households in which they lived and worked as servants. Hajnal, J., ‘European marriage in
perspective’, in D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley, eds., Population in History (1965), pp. 101–143.
30 Since conjugal families are in fact nuclear families we shall use the term nuclear families to indicate both
family forms.
24
8
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
B.
The influence of timing and location of marriage: the
squeeze hypothesis
The European marriage pattern is characterized by, amongst others, high
marriage ages for men and women, high percentages of singles amongst men and
women and the formation of a new household upon marriage. This combination
of elements lead to a gap in between generations. In these areas the time at
which those children were setting up their own households and started having
children of their own, coincided with the time at which their parents were
getting old and needy and are likely to become widowed. The European Marriage
Pattern not only affects the physical presence of members of the household but
does also have an impact on the economic lifecycles of parents and their children.
Basically, accumulation of wealth slows during three ‘squeezes’. The ‘early
adulthood squeeze’, when a household is to be set up. The ‘middle adulthood
squeeze’, caused by costs of adolescent children. And the ‘retirement squeeze’,
which occurs when household members stop working. As a result, the wealth of
households does not progress linearly or exponentially.31 Instead, some periods
in the life cycle are more difficult than others, and during these squeezes
households may depend on security arrangements.
For any nuclear family household, the availability of security
arrangements depends partly on the financial situation of ‘supporting
households’, such as parental households. These should ideally give support
during squeezes. When squeezes in a life cycle of parental households and that of
the spouses coincide, support (or even mutual support) becomes difficult, and
nuclear hardship may emerge. In extended families, where different generations
share the same household, those squeezes do not coincide, and in-living
grandparents are able to jump in when their children experience a squeeze. In
turn, when they themselves experience the ‘retirement squeeze’ their children
are able to support them.
31 L. Di Matteo, ‘Wealth accumulation and the life-cycle in economic history: implications of alternative
approaches to data in: Explorations in economic history 35 (1998) 296-324, pp. 300.
9
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
Figure 1: The Squeeze Hypothesis: life cycles in EMP and non-EMP areas.
Figure 1 shows that the age at marriage determines to a large degree whether
squeezes in households of parents and children coincide. Under EMP, late
marriages increased the risk of parents becoming widows/widowers at the same
time their children started parenting their own children. This may have reduced
possibilities for assistance: both households might have struggled
simultaneously with a lack of financial as well as physical support. When the age
of marriage is lower (the non-EMP scenario in figure 1.) the squeezes in the
households of parents and children are less likely to coincide.
These are general models. The bottom line, however, is clear. Late
marriage increases the chance households are parenting children at a time when
the grandparents no longer are able to lend their financial or physical support.
This also works the other way around: when grandparents experience the
‘retirement squeeze’ and depend on support, their children go through the ‘early
adulthood squeeze’. And even if family ties didn’t wither away over time, this
unfavourable timing of wealth cycles within nuclear family households made it
virtually impossible for generations to give each other mutual support.
Another feature of the EMP that influences security for the elderly is the small
age gap between spouses.32 In non-EMP areas, the age gap is larger. The
‘younger’ women in non-EMP areas are as such able to look after their ageing
spouses. On the other hand, those women are more likely to be widowed at an
early age, unlike women in the EMP areas. For this reason, societies in non-EMP
areas are likely to have more widows than widowers. But since they are also
likely to share their households with their children, widowhood might not be as
problematic as it would be in EMP-areas. In addition, a premature death of a
husband would present young widows with the possibility to remarry (provided
they are allowed to do so) or become/remain active on the labour market. All in
all, this would leave widowed women in EMP-areas in a potentially more
vulnerable position, than women in areas with larger age gaps. But we should
not jump to conclusions: De Moor and Van Zanden33 have elsewhere already
demonstrated that the position of women within EMP-areas was, from the Late
Middle Ages onwards, already substantially more advanced than elsewhere,
leading to a higher labour and capital market participation of women. Moreover,
R. P. Saller, ‘Men's Age at Marriage and Its Consequences in the Roman Family’, Classical Philology Vol. 82,
No. 1, Jan., 1987:21-34.
33 T. de Moor and J.L van Zanden. ‘Girlpower. The European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and labour markets in
the north sea region in the late medieval and early modern period’. Economic history review, 2010 63(1), 133.
32
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
inheritance rules concerning a deceased husband’s property or capital might also
be decisive; making for rich widows at the expense of rich son’s.
The age gap between spouses has yet another effect: in EMP areas we see a
clear demarcation of generations, a generation gap, which is absent in non-EMP
families. This generation gap adds to the difficult position of the elderly, and the
impossibility for offspring to support them, whether those elderly parents would
be in-living (which they are obviously not) or living apart. Figure 2 demonstrates
why ties between parents and children do, in EMP areas, no longer provide
security for elderly parents. The key to this enigma lies in the age-gap at
marriage:
11
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
Figure 2: The age-gap hypothesis
Let us take a closer look at the implications of this figure. For the purpose of our
argument we have taken a mean age-gap of ten years (non-EMP spouses). Now,
with the age gap of ten years, and girls marrying in their teens, both a girl as well
as her mother, is (possibly) simultaneously at a childbearing age, which gives
them the opportunity to share the care of children. Furthermore, her parents as
well as the parents of her spouse will not age simultaneously, which diminishes
the burden of care. In EMP areas, however, where spouses are of the same age,
whereas their parents, in turn, would also have been of the same age at their
marriage, all parents will age simultaneously. Apart from having four elderly
parents that likely demand care, their children, being young, equally demand
care.
On the other hand, the period before marriage, as well as the period in which
their children have left the house, whereas their parents already might have died,
the couple would have no-one relying on them for care or finances. This would
provide them with the possibility to save for either household formation or
invest and make provisions for old age. If we assume couples start having
children right after marriage, the pattern for those first children reveals an even
stricter pattern: this diminishes the possible ages of all parents by half. Parents
in EMP areas would thus be between 50 and 65 years of age at the birth of their
first grandchild, whereas in non-EMP areas, the pattern becomes:
F
M
HF
HM
- 40 - 65
- 30 - 55 (M would be able to take care of her husband F)
- 50 - 75
- 40 - 65 (HM would be able to take care of her husband HF)
Taken this into account, it is possible to see that the life-cycle patterns of the
non-EMP family-members do not diverge as much. As we have already stated,
this pattern shows an overlap in which both a daughter (Ego) as well as her
12
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
mother (M) is having babies simultaneously, blurring the different generations
somewhat more. Whereas we have taken a mean age gap for non-EMP areas of
ten years, an age gap between spouses in for example Africa might be much
larger. Since men can have multiple wives as well as divorce and remarry, they
continuously produce offspring. An elderly man might thus have a new wife with
a baby, whereas his son, as well as his grandson also has a baby. In that case it
becomes very hard to discover a pattern of generations, such as can be found in
EMP-areas. Neolocality might only partly have been responsible for the
breakdown of family ties. A high marital age for women, and a small age gap
between spouses, certainly attributes to a generation gap.
C.
Effects on life expectancy at old age
Peter Laslett’s ‘nuclear hardship’ concept assumes people living in EMP areas
were worse off than people living in non-EMP areas. In theory, a relative lack of
care should have caused high mortality in EMP areas, particularly during the
retirement squeeze. All things equal, this should have resulted in high mortality,
among the elderly in EMP areas, and if this was the case this should have had an
effect on the life expectancy of elderly as well.
In general, life expectancy at birth increased in pre-industrial societies,
from 25 in the late middle ages to 30 in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.34 However, since this figure includes (the many) instances of infant
mortality, it is better to use life expectancy of adults at an age, in particular after
the age of 30. Wrigley and Schofield, when calculating life expectancy at age 30 in
England, arrived at c. 30 years,35 which means that the ‘risk’ of growing old and
becoming dependent was not imaginary.
Retrieving pre-industrial data on life expectancy is difficult, not many
studies provide such data. Although historical demographers have studied
mortality for many regions in Europe, they have focused on varying time periods,
localities (e.g. towns and/or villages) and social groups. Table 1 presents some
(scanty) evidence on England and Italy, which suggests that life expectancy
tended to be slightly higher in England than in Italy – although we must stress
these data can only serve to give the most general of impressions. Still, they
suggest there was no adverse effect on life expectancy at a later age caused by
the specific characteristics of the household in an EMP-area.
Table 2: Life expectancy in the first half of the 15th century
At birth
Age 20
England
23,8 – 32,8
29,4 - 27,7
Italy
29
25,4
Age 30
24,1 - 25,0
21,8
England: Life expectancy for 1401-1425 and 1426-1450, based on Russel’s data – the table gives both.
Italy: based on David Herlihy’s data on the small town of Pistoia (1427).
Sources: GY. Acsádi and J. Nemeskéri, History of human life span and mortality (Budapest 1970) 256; D.
Herlihy, Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia, 283-286.
34
Wrigley and Schofield, The population history of England.
E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The population history of England 1541-1871. A reconstruction (London
1981) 250.
35
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
III. Benefits in a nuclear society?
So far we have explained that although the elderly must have experienced
substantial problems in a nuclear society but that this apparently did not have
any negative effect on their life expectancy. Why was this? Was “nuclear
hardship” solved by the emergence of care supplied by top-down institutions,
driven by charity? If so, it is likely that we see a difference in such institutional
arrangements between areas with extended families and nuclear families. If we
do not find such differences, there must have been other arrangements for
elderly to deal with hardship. In the rest of this part 3 we will demonstrate that
the institutional diversity in the EMP-areas allowed elderly to develop sufficient
“agency” to deal with future problems of care pro-actively. In this, the North
Western society differs substantially from the Southern European society.
A.
Top-down care as the solution?
Middle Ages witnessed what André Vauchez named a revolution of charity,
between 1130 and 1260.36 In Italy new religious orders were the main
beneficiaries: they received money to distribute among the poor. However, late
Middle Ages showed a shift toward institutionalized poor relief, and to this end
individuals and confraternities started to construct religious and charitable
buildings, particularly after 1350.37 Also, wealthy Florentines started to
bequeath dowry funds and hospitals with cash and land. Some built their own
hospitals, like the hospital of Santa Maria degli Innocenti, which was founded by
Francesco Datini. Charitable institutions experienced a rise of wealth that can
best be expressed in the proportion of taxable wealth, which was 12% in 1315
and 28.8% in 1475. By the fifteenth century, some hospitals were amongst the
wealthiest corporations in Tuscan towns.38 Henderson linked this development
up with ‘a concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer people and the
increased liquidity of money, which in turn led to increased investment in
charitable enterprises’.39 This advance came to an end during the sixteenth and
seventeenth century, when people stopped giving to charitable institutions. Gifts
to monasteries and convents made a recovery.40 In Venice, the foundation of
hospitals particularly occurred during the fourteenth century: one hospital was
an initiative of the state, whilst others were founded by guilds and crafts.41 Most
hospitals were founded by laymen, though.
The foundation of hospitals generally was a matter of investment in social
prestige and lineage: hospitals were prestigious monuments which could
A. Sommerlechner, ‘Spitäler in Nord- und Mittelitalien vom 11. bis zum Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts’ in
Martin Scheutz et al (eds.), Europäisches Spitalwesen. Institutionele Fürsorge in Mittelalter und Früher
Neuzeit (München 2008) 105-134, pp. 106.
37 P. Gavitt, ‘Economy, charity and community in Florence, 1350-1450’ in T. Riis (ed.), Aspects of poverty in
early modern Europe (Alphen aan den Rijn/Stuttgart/Brussels/Firenze 1981) 79-118, pp. 102-103; Gavitt,
Charity and children in renaissance Florence, 1.
38 J. Henderson, The renaissance hospital. Healing the body and healing the soul (New haven/London 2006)
60. Most hospitals were poor though.
39 Henderson, Piety and charity, 353; Gavitt, ‘Economy, charity, and community’, 84.
40 Pullan, Rich and poor, 201.
41 Pullan, Rich and poor, 208-209. In Florence, of the seven major guilds, only the furriers and Guidici e Notai
did not engage in patronizing public or religious institutions (Goldthwaite, The buildings, 10).
36
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
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Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
increase status and ensure the survival of family names.42 As Goldthwaite points
out ‘…many of these hospitals were so small that it is unlikely that they were
founded simply to satisfy a pressing need for more hospital beds. Most were
founded either by rich patricians who left large bequests for that purpose,
especially in the generation after the Black Death, or by religious communities
organized to perform some kind of social welfare function.’43 Patrons tried to link
those buildings with their lineage, e.g. by adding motives from family arms to
capitals. This particularly was the case with Renaissance palaces, which bore
signs of ownership, but most likely also with loggias, villas and hospitals.44
In late-medieval Low Countries, the amount of hospitals also increased. In
this respect, it is difficult to isolate motives as well. Spaans mentions e.g. the
influence religious writings might have had, on investments in charity.45 This
tendency started at an earlier stage in the Southern Low Countries than in the
North. Gasthuizen were built in the North, from about 1250 onward. These were
founded by royalty, town councils, wealthy townsmen, monks and nuns.46
On basis of the aforementioned, the hypothesis, that community-based
social security would be relatively efficient, could reach a larger number of
elderly than a family safety network, can be rejected. This top down form of
communal social security, seems to have existed throughout Europe, regardless
of different marriage patterns, and might not have been effectively organized
after all.
B.
Extending the nuclear household?
Already in the late medieval period in North Western Europe, the active
labour market allowed the elderly to hire a servant – an extra pair of hands
would also have been handy at other stages in the life cycle. Hajnal describes
young people circulating between households as servants, functioning according
to the rules of ‘normal household formation behaviour’, in North Western
Europe.47 Evidence, from taxes as well as censes, show that these servants were
counted as members of the households they worked for. The question remains
whether or not these servants (or for that matter, lodgers), were close or distant
relatives to the other household members (thus making those households into a
kind of extended family households).48 But even if this were not the case, it still
remains clear that ‘nuclear’ households could be substantially extended via
living-in servants. The summary Reher gives of early modern (mainly 18th
century) data on the presence of servants shows clear differences throughout
Europe:
Henderson, Piety and charity, 353.
Goldthwaite, The buildings, 11. A similar image emerges from Gavitts account of the relatively large
Ospedale degli Innocenti of Florence, which constantly had to admit large numbers of orphans that smaller
institutions could not cope with (Gavitt, ‘Charity and state building in cinquecento Florence’).
44 Goldthwaite, The buildings, 84-85, 88.
45 Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland 1500-1800, 25-27; Spaans, ‘Weduwen, wezen en vreemdelingen’, 256.
46 Kossmann-Putto, ‘Armen- en ziekezorg in de Noordelijke Nederlanden’, 255-256.
47Hajnal, J., ‘Two kinds of preindustrial household formation system’, Population and Development Review,
8,1982:452.
48 Paper presented at the N.W. Posthumus Conference 2011: J. de Groot, ‘Strangers at home? Towards a reassessment of domestic servanthood in fifteenth-century Ghent’, University of Antwerp – Centre for Urban
History.
42
43
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
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Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
Table 3: Percentage of servants in several northern and central European
populations
Country
Denmark
Iceland
Norway
Belgium
Austria
Holland
Germany
France
France
Sample/Place
Sample of parishes
3 counties
3 areas
9 Flemish villages
Large sample listings
(19 listings; median value)
4 localities
Grossenmeer
Longuenesse (north)
2 southern villages
Date
1787/1801
1729
1801
1814
17TH -18TH
Century
1622-1795
1795
1778
1644-97
Percent servants
17.6
17,1
8.9
14,2
13,0
11.7
10.7
12.6
6,4
Table 4: Percentage of servants in southern European populations
Country Region
Sample/place
Date Percent servants
Italy
Kingdom of
Large multiregional
1610- 0.7-1.5
Naples (South) sample
1839
Parma (Po
River Valley)
Pisa (Tuscany)
Portugal
Spain
Contado (rural areas)
4 villages, several
listings
Bologna
Adjacent rural areas
Minho
Sao Tiago de Ronfe
(northwest)
(Guimaraes) (33
listings, 5-year
intervals)
Tras-os-Montes Regional rural sample
(northeast)
(82 villages)
Santarem
Vila de Coruche,
(central)
Salvaterra
de Magos (2 villages)
Coimbra (north Regional rural sample
central)
(26 parishes)
Valencia (east) Meliana, Benimaclet (2
villages)
Navarre
Large regional sample
(north)
Santander
Subregional sample
(north)
(Buelna)
Galicia
Large regional sample
(northwest)
Basque
San Salvador del Valle,
Country
Irun
16
1545
4.0-6.0
1656- 9.5
1740
1853 5.0-7.0
1740- 3.6
1900
1796
4.6
1788,
1789
6.0
1801
2.5
1753,
1788
1786
3.8
1752
3.0-4.0
1752
2.6-3.5
1766,
1877
5.3
7.3
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
(north)
Cuenca
(center)
MurciaAlicante
(southeast)
Andalusia
(south)
Large regional sample
Orihuela (Santiago), 4
listings
1750- 3.6-5.0
1850
1719- 1.3
1829
Entire region
1787
2.4
These tables are taken from the article of Reher, for details we refer to his article.49
Such a ‘labour market solution’, in the form of personnel that could provide extra
hands in exchange of a salary, certainly held advantages over the ordinary
extended family. Those hired household members could be expelled, once they
were no longer needed. They had no claims to any land or property which
belonged to a family. And if they fell ill or got disabled, they easily could be
replaced. The question remains however which families these servants were
living in with, whether they served as extra hands complementary to small
nuclear families or whether they lived in particular in households where children
had already moved out. Very preliminary results on the basis of data for the early
17th century in the Netherlands show that in about two thirds of the households
where a servant lived in, there were no children of the head of household (or
partner) living-in, suggesting that in most cases servants can indeed be
considered as a “replacement” for living-in kin.50 Further research on the
position of living-in servants (composition and age structure of household, ages
of servants, potential kin-relationship with households in which they lived etc.) is
however required to complete this picture.
In the rest of the article we will look at the different options the elderly
could rely upon, when they no longer received support or care from their
children, possibly in combination with the “servant-solution”. When studying the
NHT, the elderly are the most ‘interesting’ group amongst the persons that
needed support, because –as explained already in the introduction- we expect to
find more demand-driven solutions among the middle-class, who have the means
to organise a better old age, than among the really poor. A focus on children or
orphans, possible victims of nuclear hardship, would also be difficult. Children
have little ‘agency’ and are hardly able to change their living conditions on their
own. As such, any changes in their circumstances necessarily have to come from
others (supply). As Laslett suggests, the elderly do suffer from nuclear hardship.
But we will demonstrate in the part hereafter, that many problems were solved
by their pro-active behaviour (savings, activities on capital markets) which could
also be circumscribed as a form of “agency”, which demonstrates what makes the
EMP-area distinct from the rest of Europe (and the rest of the world). Thus stress
on agency can complement the discussion on solutions for nuclear hardship so
far and which go back to the claim of Laslett that family and collective
Reher, family ties.
These results are based on a preliminary analysis of the hoofdgelden for 12 villages in the Netherlands, of
which most of the sources date from 1623. Further research is however needed to verify these preliminary
analysis results.
49
50
17
From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
institutions “always imply each other”:51 “the more widespread the nuclear
family, and the more strictly neo-local rules are applied, the more important
collective institutions will be for the security of the individual”.52
We distinguish four ‘types’ of arrangements, stressing interaction
between the various types as one of the characteristics of the EMP-area. For each
of these types we will explain how these worked in practice in the EMP-area and
to what extend these could also be found in Southern Europe where the EMP was
not –or much less- prevalent in the Early Modern Period. Furthermore we try to
estimate to what extend these ‘solved’ the problems caused by the EMP. One of
the distinguishing features of the EMP-area is the early emergence of these four
types and –even more important- the degree to which they interacted. As we will
show, (capital) market arrangements also became normal as part of the
community-provisions, and this is clearly due to the early development of the
capital markets in North Western Europe.53
Figure 3: Security arrangements for the elderly
A careful study of the above options shows that differences between EMP-areas
and non-EMP-areas especially show up in the way in which individuals dealt
with each other and the way in which the market was integrated into other forms
of care. In our discussion of the available literature underneath we focus on
changes on the individual level and the influence of the market on these and the
collective arrangements.
Laslett, A fresh map of life, p. 133.
Laslett, Family, kinship…, p. 156
53 Zuijderduijn
51
52
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
C.
Differences in individual arrangements between family,
neighbours and strangers
Though altruism and moral obligation might have been motors to individual care
arrangements, such arrangements were rarely documented. More formal
arrangements between individuals, however, were in some cases well
documented. Close reading through literature reveals the existence of pension
plans and retirement contracts, throughout Western Europe.54 These retirement
contracts were made up with kin as well as with strangers. Parts of them were
drawn up between parents and their children. The fact itself that this was
necessary indicates that care of children for their parents, was not, or no longer,
customary at all.
The oldest retirement contracts stem from 13th century England, Denmark
and France. Clark links an emergence of pension plans in England to non-kin
indirectly with the lack of family support: the devastating effects of the plague
left many childless, thus creating a situation whereby three-quarters of all post
plague cases had no explicit filial tie between the pensioner and his benefactor.55
Those pension plans served not just to provide financial security but also
included arrangements such as clothing, bed-linens, the provisions of fuel or
wood for the fireplace. The elderly might demand a private room to live in, a field
to cultivate or an oven for baking. Others included their funeral provisions and
the assurance of prayers being said for their souls. The bottom-line was clear
‘they wanted assurance that their needs would be met.’56 Different forms of
retirement contracts between individuals, who were not necessarily family, can
be found elsewhere in north-Western and northern Europe from a quite early
date.
E. Clarck, ‘Some aspects of social security in medieval England’, Journal of Family History, 7/4, 1982: 307320; B. Moring, Nordic retirement contracts and the economic situation of widows, Continuity and Change
21 (3), 2006:389; B. Moring, Rural widows, economy and co-residence in the 18th and 19th centuries,
History of the Family 15 (2010) 239–254;
Vogt 2008; Poska ; C. Brettell, ‘Kinship and Contract: Property Transmission and Family Relations in
Northwestern Portugal’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jul.), 1991: 448 ; T.Held,
‘Rural retirement arrangements in 17th and 18th century Austria: a cross-community analysis’, Journal of
Family History, 7/3 1982:227-250; G. Brunel, ‘Une retraite bien prepare. Le cas du paysan Raoul le Picard à
la fin du XIIIe siècle’, Histoire &Sociétés Rurales 2010/1 (Vol. 33). ; D. Gaunt, The property and kin
relationships of retired farmers in northern and central Europe, in R Wall (ed.), Family forms in historic
Europe, 1983; M. Dribe and C. Lundh, “Retirement as a Strategy for Land Transmission: A Micro-study of
Preindustrial Rural Sweden,” Continuity and Change 20, no. 2 (2005): 165-91; The History of the Family,
Volume 10, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 293-308. C.Lundh and M. Olsson, “The Institution of Retirement on Scanian
Estates in the Nineteenth Century,” Continuity and Change 17, no. 3 (2002): 373-403; Mitterauer and Sieder,
The European Family, Basil Blackwell: Oxford 1982. Leonardo Fusè, Parents, children and their families:
Living arrangements of old people in the XIX century,
Sundsvall region, Sweden. Umeå 2008; M. Dribe, C.Lundh, and P.Nystedt, Widowhood Strategies in
Preindustrial Society, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxviii:2 (Autumn, 2007), 207–232.;
55E. Clarck, ‘Some aspectsandof social security in medieval England’, Journal of Family History, 7/4, 1982:
316.
56Idem 1982:312
Pat Thane links the existence of retirement contracts to the ‘landholding class’, suggesting that retirement
contracts were bound to land. Even if land (in the English case) was not owned but ‘lended’, by a lord, who
profited from the contracts, by fees levied for him. According to Thane, retirement contracts demonstrate
that elderly tried to preserve their independence: ‘They display old people carefully planning the maximum
use of resources available to them’.P. Thane, Old Age in English History: Past Experiences, Present Issues,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000:75.
54
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
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Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
The ‘contrat de placement’,57 an arrangement between neighbours is
found as early as 1290 in Northern France.58 Here, at least since 1200, the elderly
no longer stayed with their relatives, but looked for contractual solutions, to
solve their hardship. In Douai and Cambrai a system of ‘gouvernance’ existed, by
which the gouvernant received goods from an individual or couple, in exchange
for food, clothes and a roof over one’s head.59 Contracts were also made between
children and parents, or parents-in-law, demonstrating that care provided by
children was not, or no longer, customary.
In the same period the emergence of ‘fledforing’ (literally: to be led into
another household) should be situated for Scania and Zealand (in Danmark) as
well as in part of Sweden 60 (end of the 12th or the beginning of the 13th
century). Fledforing is a legal term, referring to a kind of retirement contract, in
which elderly or sick who could no longer provide for themselves, could offer
themselves and all their property to a heir (not a stranger) at the thing (the local
court), in exchange for food and shelter. A ‘fledforte person’ would lose his or her
legal status and personal rights, whereas an heir became his or her legal
guardian.61 Fledforing probably resulted from the introduction of new laws (and
changing taxes on the land) based on ‘canonical teachings about degrees of
consanguinity’.62 The new, rigid definition of kinship (and as such the new
inheritance laws) made it difficult, for individuals, to dispose of their property
the way they preferred.
Similar practices seem to have existed throughout the whole area where
Germanic Laws prevailed: in Scandinavia, notably Sweden (sytning, undantag,
føderåd), Austria and Germany (Ausgedinge, Auszug, Ausbehalt, Ausnahme,
Austrag, Altenteil, Leibzucht, Leibgedinge, Winkel ), Czech (wymenek), Finland
(syytinki) and Norway (kår, kårstue, hold, korts, føderåd, ramførsle).63 However,
retirement contracts in those countries seem to be from a later date than the
ones in Denmark, France or England. Gaunt describes that children in
Scandinavia were not obliged to take care of their parents. Thus, in a similar
construction, whereby the elderly present themselves at the local court to
relatives that are willing to take care of them in exchange for their property,
children would risk to be disinherited. However, Swedish laws (installed by Earl
Birger in the mid-thirteenth century) prevented parents from disinheriting their
children completely.64 Gaunt sees the retirement contracts with relatives as a
kind of alimentation system, rather than a real property transfer and calls those
In the literature, the term ‘contrat de placement’ also refers to a contract between parents and wet-nurses
concerning the nursing of children.
58The uniqueness of this contract, between Raoul de Picard and his neighbours Drouard Basin et Sibille
seems clear. G. Brunel, ‘Une retraite bien prepare. Le cas du paysan Raoul le Picard à la fin du XIIIe siècle’,
Histoire &Sociétés Rurales 2010/1 (Vol. 33).
59 Idem 2010/1
60 D. Gaunt, The property and kin relationships of retired farmers in northern and central Europe, in R Wall
(ed.), Family forms in historic Europe, 1983:252
61 H. Vogt, Fledføring – elder care and the protection of the interest of heirs in Danish medieval laws’, Legal
History Review, vol 76, no. 3-4, 2008: 273. D. Gaunt, ‘The property and kin relationships of retired farmers
in Northern and Central Europe’, in: Richard Wall, Jean Robin, Peter Laslett, Family forms in Historic Europe
1983:251.
62M.H. Gelting, ‘Odelsrett – lovbydelse – bordsratt – retraitlignager, Kindred and
land in the Nordic countries in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in L.I. Hansen (ed.), Family, Marriage
and Property Devolution in the Middle Ages, Tromso 2000.
63 D. Gaunt, The property and kin relationships of retired farmers in northern and central Europe, in R Wall
(ed.), Family forms in historic Europe, 1983: 251.
64 Idem 1983: 252.
57
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
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Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
contracts ‘anticipated inheritance’.65 In Denmark and Sweden such an
‘anticipated inheritance’ was common from the early 16th century on, whereas in
Austria and Germany similar retirement contracts with kin are found from the
second quarter of the 17th till the 19th century.
Elsewhere in Europe, especially south of the ‘core’ EMP-area, the
arrangements for care-taking differed in various ways: not only did the caretaking entail a physical inclusion in the household –family or not-, it did not
always go together with contracting. If it did, this usually was part of a
contractual transfer of property, from one generation to another. Early Modern
Spanish law did not specifically authorize retirement contracts. In many cases,
retirement arrangements appeared as conditions to dowry contracts, in which
the dowry was contingent on the newlywed’s acceptance of the responsibility of
caring for the parent or other adult that provided the dowry. They also were
integrated into legal documents known as escritura de mejora.66 A person could
also formulate a document that provided a gift to another, a donacion entre vivos,
before the death of the provider but often depending on certain conditions.
Finally, the texts of many wills either reasserted the terms of retirement
contracts or compensated tacitly contracted care with testamentary bequests.67
Brettell describes similar Portuguese strategies to influence
intergenerational property transfer: ‘Dotes de Casamento or marriage bequests,
Doaçoes or general bequests, Testamentos or wills, and Partilhas or land
divisions.68 These documents could include retirement clauses by which parents
ensured that someone would care for them in their old age. The dote should thus
be considered as a marriage transaction that set up an obligation, reinforcing,
rather than dispensing with, the relationship between parents and
children.69Doaçoes could also be used to secure care to childless couples, or
unmarried men and women. They could provide nieces and nephews with parts,
or all, of their possessions.70 Similar to the practices Poska perceives in Spain,
parents use wills and bequests, in order to leave money and property to
unmarried daughters, in gratitude for service and care.
A reference to retirement payments, linked to dowries, is also found in
Moring’s article on 19th century retirement contracts in Norway: ‘In Norway the
transfer was usually formalized as a sale of the farm or a part of it. A sum of
money was paid or was to be paid (to be used for dowry for daughters and for
inheritance compensation for younger brothers). In practice the older and the
younger couple usually shared household and economy, which facilitated the
Held, however, who writes more specifically about the Austrian Ausgedinge, sees them as an alternative to
the stem family system, having more to do with the continuance of the house and household itself .Held,
Thomas, Rural Retirement Arrangements in Seventeenth- to Nineteenth-Century Austria:
A Cross-Community Analysis, Journal of Family History, 7:3, 1982: Fall.
66 ‘The mejora, an additional one-third plus one-fifth of the estate bequeathed to a favored child, was widely
used in some areas of Galicia to supplement partible inheritance. The bequest created a reciprocal
relationship between the person creating the mejora and the recipient in which the receipt of the additional
portion of the postmortem estate was dependent on the fulfillment of the old-age demands made by the
provider.’ A. M. Poska Gender, Property, and Retirement Strategies in Early Modern Northwestern Spain,
Journal of Family History 25, 2000:317.
67Idem:317
68 C. Brettell, ‘Kinship and Contract: Property Transmission and Family Relations in Northwestern Portugal’,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jul.), 1991: 448.
69 Idem 1991:450
70 Idem.
65
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Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
‘caring’ and ‘feeding’.71 Moring points out that retirement contracts in Nordic
countries, dating from the 19th and 20th century (unlike the fledforing
contracts), were part of a ‘family insurance strategy’, and secured livelihood of
widows.72 Although retirement contracts in Nordic countries were favourable to
widows, Moring claims these contracts served foremost to retain rights of
property (land and houses) within the family. The restructuring of the
retirement contract enabled them to retain a familiar life pattern despite the
threats to their life style from a rising market economy and new laws.73
Although the contractual arrangements vis-à-vis retirements deserve
further comparative study, some general conclusions can be drawn. Individual
arrangements differ in North-western and southern Europe: the EMP-centre
reveals more contracts in which family members are bound to their obligations
towards their families, but even more striking is that it was not uncommon to
negotiate such contracts with strangers.74 In the south, in Spain (17th century) as
well as in Portugal (19th century), retirement contracts as such did not exist. 75
However, the elderly could negotiate care, but these contractual arrangements
usually went together with already existing transfers of property, i.e. dowry
contracts or wills. These contracts seem foremost to be arranged with relatives.
The explanation for this difference should maybe not only be sought in the actual
strength of family ties, but also in the timing of the household life cycle: in nonEMP-areas the timing of the marriage of the first child is well-before the age of
retirement of the parents, whereas the marriage of the first child in EMP-areas
coincides, or even may be later than the age at which parents really start thinking
about their need for care and support. When old age is still far-ahead, but a
parent wants to secure future care-taking, they need to bind children to this
obligation. For who knows how the relationships between the children and
parents might change in the meantime? On top of this, the intergenerational
exchange of property inter vivos was in non-EMP-areas for women –via the
dowry- more important than the post mortem exchange (inheritance), which thus
gives more incentives to link conditions for such a transfer to dowry contracts.
Following a similar line of reasoning, of marital payments being used to
secure property, or relationships, to provide social security for old age, we
should not disregard the institution of the dower. The dower, or morning gift,76 a
71 B. Moring, Nordic retirement contracts and the economic situation of widows, Continuity and Change 21
(3), 2006:389.
72 Idem.
73 Idem 2006:399
74 We cannot completely ignore that the situation in North Western Europe might have been different to
start with; that the retirement contracts were not so much the result of the breakdown of family-ties, but the
effect of the emphasis of laws to define rules regarding kinship rights (possibly under influence of the Canon
laws), as Vogt suggests when discussing the fledforing contracts of Denmark. Similarly, the accounts of
Gaunt and Clarck are not so positive on the treatment of the elderly, whether by strangers or by their
children. Gaunt even suggests that the treatment of the elderly depended on their landholding. D. Gaunt,
The property and kin relationships of retired farmers in northern and central Europe, in R Wall (ed.), Family
forms in historic Europe, 1983.
75 Brettell remarks, on changing dowry in Portugal: ‘Here too reciprocity and respect for the elderly are
primary guiding principles. Conversely, where young people can find alternative sources of wealth and
therefore independence from parental inheritance, the status of the elderly may be eroded.’ C. Brettell,
‘Kinship and Contract: Property Transmission and Family Relations in Northwestern Portugal’, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jul.), 1991.
76 The dower is also called douaire, dour, morgengabe, morgengift, morgengave. In England noble widows
were called ‘dowagers’. Their dower could consist of a money, a house (hence the term dowerhouse is used)
or land.
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
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Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
West European marital payment stemming from Germanic law, dating back to
the 12th century, seems to serve similar purpose of securing livelihoods of
widows.77 The dower used to be decided at marriage. The actual transfer
however, of money or goods, took place when a husband died, and could amount
to a third of his possessions.78 Whereas both the dower, as well as the dowry
(both marital payments) was used to assure livelihoods for old age, both customs
differ substantially. In the first place, the dower is a gift from a husband to his
wife, whereas dowry is a gift from parents to daughters.79 Secondly, the dower
does not secure physical care: it provides a widow with property to remain
independent, whereas the dowry arrangements we see in articles about Spain,
Italy and Norway serve to secure the ties between relatives, and assure care for
elderly family members, as well as accommodation, to the couple (or unmarried
female relative) who offers this care. The differences between EMP and non-EMP
areas thus not only have to do with the frequency of contracts between parents
and children –or other partners- but also in the type of transfers between
parents and children, whether these addressed issues of care-taking in old-age or
not.
D.
The influence of the market on care-taking institutions
Private and public charity-institutions were omnipresent in most of early
modern Europe. Charity had been an important form of wealth ‘redistribution’
since the so-called “revolution of charity”, in between 1130 and 1260.80 What
makes charity different from the other forms of support is the fact that it is not
demand-driven, but (mainly) supply-driven: institutions are set-up by the
Church, by local nobility or by the State (especially from the 16th century
onwards) and although demand –the need for leprosaria, for instance, is clearly
linked to the disease – could form an initial incentive to set-up the institute, these
institutions could (continue to) exist without much demand.81 Top-down
initiatives sometimes became redundant over time and some even were so from
the start, for instance in the event the benefactor’s prime motive was to display
charitable intentions rather than to provide actual aid. This is evident in some of
the hospitals Italian families built to intensify the ties with the village their
ancestors had lived: lacking demand for care, these buildings served more as
lieux de memoire than as hospitals.82 To be sure: other motives may also have
played a part, such as religious beliefs,83 and genuine compassion. This does not
G. L. Haskins, ‘The development of common law dower’, Havard Law Review, Vol 62, 1948-1949:42-55.
F. Buckstaff, Married Women’s Property in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman Law and the origin of
common law dower, annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, IV, 233-264. 1893
79 J. Goody and S.J. Tambiah, bridewealth and dowry, 1973.
80 A. Vauchez, ‘Assistance et charité en occident, XIIIe-Xve siècles’ in V. Barbagli Bagnoli (ed.), Domande et
consumi, livelli et strutturi XIII-XVIII. Atti della sesta settimana di studio (Florence 1978) 151-162.
81 Cf. supply and demand for charity: A. Borsay and P. Shapely, ‘Introduction’, in: A. Borsay and P. Shapely
(eds.) Medicine, charity and mutual aid. The consumption of health and welfare in Britain, c. 1550-1950
(Hampshire 2007) 1-10, pp. 1.
82 Henderson, Piety and charity, 353; Goldthwaite, The buildings, 11; Gavitt, ‘Charity and state building in
cinquecento Florence’; K. Goudriaan, ‘Die Frühgeschichte des Hospitalwesens in den Grafschaften Holland
und Seeland und im Niederstift Utrecht’ in M. Pauly (ed.), Institutions de l’assistance sociale en Lotharingie
médiévale. Einrichtungen der sozialen Sicherung im Mittelalterlichen Lotharingen (Luxemburg 2008) 194255, pp. 199.
83 Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland 1500-1800, 25-27; Spaans, ‘Weduwen, wezen en vreemdelingen’, 256.
77
78
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Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
mean that hospitals did not accommodate the needy, but that to look at hospitals
as an immediate response to socioeconomic shifts – such as the emergence of
nuclear hardship – is a bit problematic. In this respect these and other top-down
initiatives differed from bottom-up initiatives – whether individual or based on
collective action, which were formed – and directed towards – the immediate
stakeholders which is clearly different from how charity-institutions were
formed.
The potential influence of nuclear hardship in EMP-areas on the way in
which these top-down institutions were working, becomes visible when we look
at the way in which elderly started negotiating their care. In Western Europe we
already encounter in the twelfth century single women seeking admittance to
hospitals and even leprosaria. Thus, ‘sound and healthy’ women were competing
for a place in St. James Hospital, in Canterbury, as early as 1160.84 Here we see
how (changes in) demand for care caused new groups to enter existing
institutions. The latter were willing to grant them access because of the
attraction of having paying customers, and also because the number of lepers
seems to have declined since the thirteenth century.85
For some social groups the question of old age was particularly pressing.
Rosenthal explains that the combination of ‘the lifelong duration of clerical
status’ combined with the absence of ‘private or family life to which they can
turn when their public role was worn out’ called for a solution. A solution was
found in the use of corrodies and annuities.86
This was a general development visible in large parts of Northwest
Europe: hospitals, leprosaria and convents were increasingly confronted with
people who were willing to pay for shelter, food and clothing. In Paris,
authorities began to worry ‘that it is unfitting that the number of the healthy
living there exceed those of the sick and of pilgrims’.87 In the west of the German
Empire, in Soest, the medieval hospital was gradually divided into a part aimed
at caring for the sick, and a part aimed at caring for women.88 The ‘corrody’
originated in 14th century England. It was originally used by kings and bishops,
to reward servants for service and to provide for the aged, sick and poor.
Corrodies ‘would protect those who, because of their vocations, were denied a
family to care for them in their old age’.89 The corrodies soon transformed into a
sort of retirement contracts which provided the elderly with food and weekly,
monthly or annually provided cash, in return to a specific one-time contribution.
These corrodies (Pröven in German, kostkopers or proveniers in Dutch)
were admitted by charitable institutions, perhaps coping with vacancies, or
unable to function without this external funding, thus began to offer ‘commercial
care’. In the Northern Low Countries this is visible in the early fourteenth
C. Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006:297-298. Cf. N. Omre and
M. Webster, The English hospital, 1070-1570 ((New Haven and London 1995) 35-36.
85 P.H. Cullum, Cremetts and corrodies. Care of the poor and sick at St. Leonards hospital, York, in the Middle
Ages (York 1995) 4. Cf. E. Power, Medieval English nunneries c. 1275-to 1535 (Cambridge 2010) 206-207.
86 J.T. Rosenthal, Old age in late medieval England (Philadelphia 1996), 107-108.
87 J.W. Brodman, ‘Religion and discipline in the hospitals of thirteenth-century France’, in B.S. Bowers, The
medieval hospital and medical practise (Aldershot 2007) 132-132, pp. 128-129.
88 B.S. Fleck, ‘Quellen zu Insassen Westfä;ischer Hospitäler im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert’, in G. Drossbach (ed.)
Hospitäler in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Frankreich, Deutschland und Italien. Eine vergeleichende
Geschichte. Hôpitaux au Moyen Ậge et aux Temps modernes. France, Allemagne et Italie. Une histoire comparée
(Munich 2007) 25-39, pp. 26.
89 R. I. Harper, ‘A Note on Corrodies in the Fourteenth Century’, Albion, vol. 15, no. 2, 1983:97.
84
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
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Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
century; specialization occurred in the sixteenth century, when so-called
proveniershuizen emerged, specializing in commercial care for the elderly.90
In England, Northern France and the Low Countries leprosaria, but also
guesthouses, hospitals and monasteries took in paying ‘guests’ (not necessarily
ill, handicapped or old) to be taken care of, as early as 1314.91 Brunel describes
the existence of such institutions (modalités de placement des vieillards) in
Northern France. In the village of Laon, begin 13th century, les bourgeois – Brunel
does not mention whether those are all elderly - gave all their property to the
‘Hôtel-Dieu’, in exchange for the best care thinkable.92 Where popularity of this
practice resulted in a surcharge for the hotel, institutions started providing
pension plans, in which food and wine were delivered at home, or where
pensioners were provided with an annual rent, to secure their subsistence
(similar to an annuity). Brunel quotes Alain Saint-Denis1, who describes how this
‘système d’assurance à la carte’ was gradually replaced by usufruct contracts.
Only in the Netherlands leprosaria, once leprosy declined, were gradually
taking in more and more paying elderly, turning into a kind of elderly homes,
that accepted either elderly men or women, and sometimes couples. Those
elderly generally paid a sum to be admitted, and had to sign a contract which
stated they would leave all or part of their possessions to the institution. In some
cases they had to bring a certain amount of possessions with them that was
carefully documented (clothing, a bed). In return, they were provided with care,
meals, clothes and even with money. This ‘allowance’ was called a ‘preuve’ or
‘proven’, which gave them the title ‘proveniers’. Once leprosy got extinct, several
leprosaria were turned into ‘proveniershuizen’, focussing solely on the elderly93.
This “institutional flexibility”, whereby the institution re-oriented itself on the
new demand instead of simply closing its business, is a remarkably phenomenon.
How flexible these institutions were is demonstrated by the leprosery of
Amsterdam. Initially it was located outside the town walls, but this changed
when the town expanded, in the fifteenth century. The enlargement included the
leprosery, or Sint Jorishof, and as a consequence the lepers had to be removed to
a new location outside of town. The function of the Sint Jorishof now changed to a
proveniershuis. Although they were not affordable for everyone, almost every
town in the Netherlands had such a proveniershuis.
The development of capital markets also offered the possibility to make
(financial) provisions for long-term care-taking. Money and property were given
up to secure the elderly of care. Although we have noticed contracts with
relatives and neighbours, this paragraph demonstrates elderly also relied on
anonymous forms of (financial) security and care, provided by institutions.
Amongst medieval financial instruments, the life annuity is regarded as an
instrument of choice, for people looking to secure old age. Investors purchase an
G. de Moor, Verborgen en geborgen: het Cisterciënzerinnenklooster Leeuwenhorst in de Noordwijkse
regio (1261-1574), PhD. Thesis, 1994:112; Kossmann-Putto, ‘Armen- en ziekezorg in de Noordelijke
Nederlanden’, 261-262; M. Danneel, Weduwen en wezen in het laat-middeeleuwse Gent (Louvain and
Apeldoorn 1995) 401.
91 G. de Moor, Verborgen en geborgen: het Cisterciënzerinnenklooster Leeuwenhorst in de Noordwijkse
regio (1261-1574), PhD. Thesis, 1994:112
92 G. Brunel, ‘Une retraite bien prepare. Le cas du paysan Raoul le Picard à la fin du XIIIe siècle’, Histoire &
Sociétés Rurales 2010/1 (Vol. 33).
93 This happened for instance to the leprosaria of Rotterdam, Schiedam, Goude, to the ‘Sint Nyclaes
gasthuus’ also called ‘hospitael van Onser Vrouwen ende Sinte Nyclaes’ or ‘Sint Anthonis gasthuus’ of
Amsterdam, and to the ‘st Jorishof’ of Amsterdam.
90
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Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
annual pension (the life annuity), which was to be paid until they would pass
away. As an alternative, couples could also buy a joint life annuity, which would
be paid until both partners had died. The yields to life annuities were resp. c.
10% for single and c. 12% for joint life annuities. This meant that investors had
to live for 8-10 years to reach the break-even point (i.e. start to profit from their
investment). Data of the age of buyers of life annuities are relatively scarce. But
there are reasons to believe that life annuities ought to be regarded as a
provision for old age. Or as a type of investment, with which people could
speculate on the age they (or their children) would reach.94
However, such market dependency posed a problem: people who received
a sum, still had to purchase food, firewood, clothing and shelter. They had to be
physically able to do this, and even if they were, they still ran risks of diminishing
returns, due to inflation. One solution, already appearing at an early stage, was to
express life annuities and redeemable annuities in kind (grains, such as rye and
wheat).95 Another solution meant: no investments in the capital market, but to
use savings, property or real estate to purchase boarding in a monastery or
hospital.96 This could be done by paying a lump sum, to purchase a ‘package’ of
food, shelter and care. In England as well as in the Low Countries, we have shown
how such ‘packages’ were offered by guesthouses and monasteries, and curiously
enough also by leprosaria.
Did extended family households also participate to such an extent in capital
markets? Many of the incentives, described above, were missing: without
neolocality, fewer people would have to borrow large amounts. In the presence
of several generations, the early adulthood squeeze may have been less severe,
since grandparents could help out. Conversely, the retirement squeeze might
have been absent: younger women cared for their aging spouses, parents and
parents-in-law did not age simultaneously and in-living children could provide
the necessary care. All in all, this would have provided the extended family with
fewer incentives to save and dissave.
We have seen - in figure 2 – that nuclear, neolocal families in which the
age gap between spouses was small, could profit from the generation gap, which
seems absent in non-EMP areas. In the period before forming households,
individuals could save to set up households. Additionally, the period in which
both spouses no longer had to take care of children, they still participated in the
labour market. This gave another chance to save up. A large age gap between
spouses, together with in-living parents, such as we see in many extended family
households, did not cause a generation gap in this sense. The blurring of
generations did not effectuate a squeeze (with the incentive to save for bad
times), but neither did it provide a period in which adults were free to
participate in the labour market simultaneously, making it possible to save.
Van Gerwen en Van Leeuwen, Studies over zekerheidsarrangementen, 143.
Annuities in kind are for instance to be found in the late-medieval Low Countries, for instance in Kampen
(14th century), but also in the North of France, where they became increasingly popular in the sixteenth
century (J.A. Kossman-Putto, Kamper schepenakten 1316-1354 (Zwolle 1955); B. Schnapper, Les rentes au
XVIe siècle. Histoire d’un instrument de crédit (Parijs 1956) 80-81.
96 I.H. van Eeghen, Vrouwenkloosters en begijnhof in Amsterdam van de 14e tot het eind der 16e eeuw
(Amsterdam 1941) 42-43. Gaunt refers to this practice as the Augustinian Soul gift, cf. D. Gaunt, The
property and kin relationships of retired farmers in northern and central Europe, in R Wall (ed.), Family
forms in historic Europe, 1983:254.
94
95
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
But what about the medieval Italian dowry funds, the monte delli doti, that
existed in early 15th century Florence, whereby parents could invest money in a
fund to have their money returned with profit once their daughters were about
to be married? Those dowry funds can in principle also be seen as investing, or
saving behaviour. The incentive, however, was not so much the idea of saving for
old age, but moreover of saving to be able to marry one’s daughters (which was a
costly affair). Also, the dowry funds were created by the government in need of
fiscal measures to finance war. While dowry funds can be seen as investing
behaviour, they again mount up to (inter vivos) exchange from parents to
daughters. If we take into account the idea that dowries can be used to enforce
status mobility,97 we see that parents are not so much interested in saving for
difficult times, but are rather buying status with a onetime investment at, or
shortly after the birth of their daughters. As such, these dowry funds are
fundamentally different from, for instance, the discussed life annuities. Dowry
funds provided their funders status, life annuities provided their funders agency.
IV. Conclusion
In this article we have explained how the European Marriage Pattern not only
influenced family ties and the strength of family safety networks, but also how
this went together with changes in the wealth accumulation cycles within
consecutive households. A focus on elderly care revealed different ways in which
the elderly were able to secure care, if their offspring were unwilling, unable, or
otherwise not inclined to do so.
The first option, the individual solutions, with one-on-one care of nonrelatives, might be based on altruism or moral obligation. They also might be
enforced, as we have seen, by (retirement) contracts, whereby individuals leave
their goods, in exchange for places to live, food, clothes and/or care. Such an
exchange has an effect on inheritance systems. These contracts are drawn up
amongst relatives, or indeed with strangers. However, the idea to draw up a
contract, to ensure oneself of the care of relatives, supposes an inherent distrust
of relatives. In extended and hierarchical households in West Africa and the
Middle East, this idea alone would be considered outrageous and unthinkable,
since morals dictate parents to be taken good care of (whether this is done or
not), as we see in extended families all over the world.98
D. Bell, Wealth transfers occasioned by marriage: a comparative reconsideration, in: Kinship, Networks
and Exchange, T. Schweitzer and D.R. White (eds.), Cambridge University Press 1998.
98o.a. S. Harral and P. Amoss, Other ways of growing old: anthropological perspectives, California: Stanford
University Press, 1981:199.
97
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
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Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
Figure 4: Solutions for elderly care in Europe during the early modern period
The other solution considered in this article is formed by top-down care. In fact
such a form of care might be needed through all times, in places where pension
plans are not generally available. Elderly without children, without land or
property, do need this form of support to be able to get by. We see however that
increasingly these institutions become part of market-based arrangements on
request of the elderly. Individuals could buy themselves into monasteries,
hospitals and guesthouses, where they would receive food and care for the rest
of their lives. The Dutch proveniershuizen, aiming entirely at the elderly, form
indeed the first elderly homes. This was different from retirement contracts.
Contracts were no longer negotiated with (familiar) individuals, but with
institutions. This shows, on one hand, trust in such institutions, and thus in their
contracts. It might, on the other hand, indicate that relatives were either absent,
or incapable of providing such care (paid or unpaid).
The fact that we can find rather “modern” ways of relief for the elderly,
whereby agency and capital of this group plays a large role, at such an early stage
in areas where the EMP would develop first adds to the strength of the idea of
the nuclear hardship caused by loosening family ties: increasingly there was a
demand, not only from the poorer parts of society, but also from middle class
groups that needed support. Living-in servant were one way to deal with it, but
buying help via corrodies, was another effective way. This links up to the squeeze
hypothesis we have discussed in this article. Under EMP older parents became
widowed more or less the same time their children started having children of
their own. In addition the absent age-gap between spouses caused parents and
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
parents-in-law to age simultaneously, adding to this pressure. The different
strategies the elderly employed to secure themselves of care give us an
indication of how and when loosened family-ties, linked to the EMP, spread over
Europe.
It is clear that the solutions presented here, however, could not have been
equally available to all elderly: not all elderly were able to buy life annuities, or to
buy themselves into an institution. This required at least some money, land, a
house or goods, to be traded against care. As such, saving was necessary. But as
we have seen, life cycles under EMP provided not only the necessity to save, but
also the possibility to save.
A focus on nuclear hardship might show but one side of the coin. Hardship
has always been present, and family ties could not always provide safety
networks. From this starting point the focus is much more on the imperatives for
an alternative safety network, which departs from the relationship between
parents and offspring, as this relationship forms the most obvious difference
between NW European households under the EMP, and other parts of Europe.
The specific problems of elderly, therefore, hold a key to understanding these
alternative safety networks. Where Laslett focused on solutions like poorhouses
and poor relief, we have seen that reality held more options.
Families do provide a safety net, but primarily when there is enough to
share. However, living with extended family-members, who always take their
share, does not encourage saving for times of scarcity. Furthermore, when lifecycles diverge, relatives take turns in caring and providing. In other words: there
is no need to save, and there are no incentives to save. If relatives will eventually
take their share, it is even useless to save. Practice shows, nuclear families are
generally only in a case of a contract obliged to provide a share to close relatives.
Whereas extended family household members seem to exchange most of their
property inter vivos, nuclear family household members seem to prefer a postmortem exchange, which is a very logical response to neolocality, in which
parents and their married offspring are no longer household members. Diverging
life-cycles, lesser claims of relatives on property and post-mortem exchange
contribute to our conclusion that property accumulation is more likely to occur
in nuclear families.
Our most important conclusion is, that EMP provided the elderly with a
choice, with agency to decide how to dispose of their property for their own
benefit. The possibility to save and the freedom to invest what has been saved,
has meant a boost to the capital market. So the EMP might not only have caused
‘nuclear hardship’, it provided ‘nuclear opportunities’, or indeed, ‘nuclear
benefits’. 99
Of course, we have to keep in mind, that the premises for agency did not just include possibilities to save,
but also the existence and availability of notaries and laws, to make and reinforce contracts.
99
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From hardship to benefit. A critical review of the nuclear hardship theory in relation to the emergence of the
European Marriage Pattern.
Annemarie Bouman, Jaco Zuijderduijn and Tine de Moor
Figure 5: Security arrangements for the elderly in perspective
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